Auvers, 1890

The record dates Houses with Thatched Roofs, Cordeville to 1890, the final year, and names a hamlet near Auvers-sur-Oise. Thatched roofs are an Auvers subject in this catalogue: five works carry the word "thatch" in the title and all five are dated 1890.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 72 x 91 cm and is held by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The measured palette resolves to ochre as the single dominant family — a comparatively warm, low-key reading for the last year, where yellow dominates 62 of 84 works and green 50.

A Dutch subject in northern France

The thatched cottage is where this catalogue's chronology comes full circle. The Nuenen years open the record with cottages, huts and low farm buildings under thatch; the Paris and Arles years abandon the motif almost entirely; and the last year brings it back around Auvers, in five separate canvases, one of which the record titles Cottages and Cypresses: Reminiscence of the North. That title is the painter's own word for the return, carried in the record rather than supplied by this catalogue.